US, Iran exchange threats of broadscale war in latest sabre rattling

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has warned the United States that Tehran will be “firing back with everything we have if we come under renewed attack”, a day after President Donald Trump reiterated threats against the Middle East country.

Araghchi’s warning came in an opinion article published by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

“Our powerful armed forces have no qualms about firing back with everything we have if we come under renewed attack,” he wrote, referring to the 12-day war launched by Israel on Iran in June last year.

The foreign minister argued this was not a “threat”, “but a reality I feel I need to convey explicitly, because as a diplomat and a veteran, I abhor war”.

He added that “an all-out confrontation will certainly be ferocious and drag on far, far longer than the fantasy timelines that Israel and its proxies are trying to peddle to the White House. It will certainly engulf the wider region and have an impact on ordinary people around the globe”.

Last week, Iran shut its airspace, likely in anticipation of a US attack. Diplomats from Middle East countries, particularly from Gulf Arab countries, lobbied Trump not to attack.

The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which had been in the South China Sea in recent days, on Tuesday passed through the Strait of Malacca, a key waterway connecting the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, ship-tracking data shows.

While US defence officials stopped short of saying the carrier strike group was headed to the Middle East, its location in the Indian Ocean means it is only days away from moving into the region.

Trump’s latest threat

Araghchi’s comments came a day after Trump repeated a warning that Iran would be wiped “off the face of this earth” if it ever succeeded in assassinating the US leader.

“I have very firm instructions. Anything happens, they’re going to wipe them off the face of this earth,” Trump said in a News Nation interview that aired on Tuesday.

Earlier on Tuesday, in response to any threats facing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian General Abolfazl Shekarchi was quoted as saying Trump already knew Tehran would not hold back if the tables were turned.

“Trump knows that if a hand of aggression is extended toward our leader, we will not only sever that hand, and this is not a mere slogan,” Iranian state media reported, quoting Shekarchi. “But we will set their world on fire and leave them no safe haven in the region.”

Trump issued a similar warning to Iran a year ago, shortly after returning to the White House, when he told reporters, “If they do it, they get obliterated.”

Deadly protests

Iran is still reeling from violence unleashed during some of the biggest antigovernment protests since the Islamic revolution in 1979.

Human rights groups are working to confirm the number of people killed during the protests. The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said the death toll had reached at least 4,519, while more than 26,300 people have been arrested.

On Sunday, an Iranian ‌official in the region told the Reuters news agency that the authorities ‍had verified at least 5,000 people had been killed in protests, including about 500 security personnel, blaming “terrorists and armed rioters” ⁠for killing “innocent Iranians”.

Iranian authorities have increasingly pointed the finger at foreign powers for the unrest, accusing longstanding geopolitical rivals – mainly Israel and the US – of fomenting instability and directing operations on the ground.

media has been unable to independently assess the death toll.

Videos that have slipped out of Iran despite an internet shutdown appear to show security forces repeatedly using live fire to target apparently unarmed protesters, something unaddressed by Araghchi.